We Must End Child Slavery In Our Lifetime

Category Archives: Child Sex Trafficking

Lawrence Taylor, the NFL Hall of Fame linebacker and recent Dancing With The Stars contestant, is now a high profile illustration of the buy side of the supply and demand equation that fuels child sex trafficking.

I’m no longer surprised when I read a story like the one accompanying Lawrence Taylor’s arrest. It’s a pretty typical American child sex trafficking story. A 15-year-old girl from the Bronx is reported missing to the police in March, only to be found beaten and bruised, physically and emotionally, imprisoned by fear and force, and serving her master by having sex with men of his choosing. No one appears to be denying the truth of this part of the story. It’s just another child sex slave. Except the press would rather call her a prostitute and her master a pimp. And many would argue that she wasn’t really “enslaved.” She chose to go with the man in the first place. That makes it all easier to swallow.

It’s also not surprising that such a prominent name is implicated. I’ve been writing about this issue for several years now. The sheer volume of children being held captive as sex slaves made the participation of prominent public figures a certainty. So the allegations against Lawrence Taylor only serve to further illustrate just how pervasive the problem of child sex trafficking is in the United States. If the allegations against him are false, it won’t change that fact.

What would surprise me?

I’ll be surprised if this story doesn’t quickly fade from the front pages. He may be innocent. If he is, it should. But if he’s not, I’ll be surprised if it actually serves as a lightning rod for changes in legislation that make it easier for authorities to prosecute those involved in the enslavement of children for sex.

Why? Because vast numbers of the American population view slavery as American history. It’s simply more comfortable to think of these girls as prostitutes and not slaves. And we’ve popularized the use of the word “pimp” to such a degree that it is more likely to be seen in the positive than the negative. There are already YouTube parodies that make light of the incident. We like it that way. It helps us sleep at night.

Will Lawrence Taylor become the poster boy for child sex slavery? I doubt it.

You’d think it would be simple to prosecute someone for enslaving another human being. You’d be wrong.

Changes to existing laws are required to insure that authorities have the tools necessary to expedite the prosecution of those involved in sex traficking and modern forms of slavery. Arizona House Bill 2673, penned by Krysten Sinema, is an example of the kind of simple changes required to make it easier. The bill did away with a provision that police need to prove that a trafficked person was acquired “for transport” to be considered being trafficked.

“This bill gives law enforcement a greater ability to fight heinous crimes like human trafficking for sex or slave labor,” Sinema said. “It’s a simple fix that makes a huge difference for public safety in our neighborhoods and offers a real solution to violence along the border.”

I can only applaud the efforts of The Body Shop as they shine the light of public exposure on the crime of child sex trafficking.

“The retailer spent 16 months researching the effort to fight sex trafficking before introducing it, Ms. Simmons said, because of the nature of the problem. The idea was to learn “how we can deliver this” message, she added, “without switching people off.” – New York Times

This is just one of their excellent “living our values” initiatives, but their focus is clear. They have a bold stop trafficking campaign, designed to “raise awareness of the scale of the issue, raise funding for vulnerable children and young people, and inspire those with decision-making power to effect change. And I love this part of it – they give their clerks training on how to “talk authoritatively about the issue.” I think it’s a bold step and one that’s needed in order for a campaign like this to have real impact. Signs are simply not enough. As a result, they’ve already raised $1.5 Million for the Somaly Mam Foundation, a substantial portion of that donated by shoppers. That’s not an accident.

This is a virus that can’t thrive in the light and we simply need more light.

Contrary to a common assumption, human trafficking is not just a problem in other countries. Cases of human trafficking have been reported in all 50 states, Washington D.C., and some U.S. territories. Victims of human trafficking can be children or adults, U.S. citizens or foreign nationals, male or female.

According to U.S. government estimates, thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked to the United States for the purposes of sexual and labor exploitation. An unknown number of U.S. citizens and legal residents are trafficked within the country primarily for sexual servitude and, to a lesser extent, forced labor.

On May 14, 2009, Patrick A. Trueman and I sat down to discuss what we both agreed was the most evil form of slavery – child sex trafficking. Our meeting took place in Washington, D.C at a small table in the restaurant of The Washington Marriott. It seems fitting in retrospect. A few miles away and 144 years earlier, on February 1, 1865, Abraham Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States of America.

We are all taught that slavery in the United States officially ended that day. It didn’t.

Partrick Trueman is the former Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, U. S. Department of Justice. Mr. Trueman has spent over 2o years in the battle against child sex trafficking and has some very strong opinions about the correlation between pornography, prostitution and the child sex trade. You may agree or disagree with his conclusions, but when you finish listening to this conversation, you will not be able to argue that you are unaware of how pervasive child sex trafficking is right here in the United States of America. This is a very frank conversation. If you are easily offended or are simply not ready to open your eyes to this issue, don’t bother clicking on the links below. If you are ready to get a more complete understanding of child slavery in America, please make the time necessary to fully digest the two clips of audio that follow.

The next piece of audio represents the rest of the recorded conversation. It is almost 50 minutes long. I had originally wanted to chop this up into several parts. I posted a small excerpt, 60 Seconds On Child Trafficking, a few days after our time together and had delayed posting the remainder until I could spend the time necessary to do intelligently split the conversation. In listening to it again, I realized this would be a mistake. Each piece of this conversation needs to be heard in it’s the context. There are some very sensitive issues that could easily be misinterpreted otherwise. So, while I realize that 50 minutes is a significant time investment, I am certain you will find the conversation as enlightening as I did.

This is a 60 second excerpt from my hour long conversation with Partrick Trueman, former Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, U. S. Department of Justice. Mr. Trueman was kind enough to drive in to Washington D.C. to meet with me last week.

I will be breaking up the hour long recording into smaller portions, but wanted to get this one up as way of announcing the upcoming segments. The recording was done in the restaurant of the Washington Marriott, so please excuse the sound quality. This segment is his response to the question, “How big is the problem of child sex trafficking in the United States.”

The humans being trafficked and forced to work as prostitutes in New Jersey were from Mexico and Honduras. They were either promised marriage or decent wages if they moved to America, but instead they were forced into a life of prostitution. These are young girls, children by definition. And let me repeat, they were FORCED into this life, into a form of modern slavery we call sex trafficking. They were brutally exploited for the sake of profits. That is what makes this next quote so hard to to understand.

“These cases are tough,” Brian Hayes, an FBI agent in Atlantic City said. “They are tough because the victims in child prostitution cases by definition are committing a crime. And they have a distrust of law enforcement. Just as illegal immigrants distrust law-enforcement, prostitutes distrust law-enforcement because they don’t want to get arrested.”

Read that again: “Victims in CHILD prostitution cases by definition are committing a crime.” I’ve read this over and over and I can’t reconcile this in my mind. They call the CHILD a VICTIM and then say the VICTIM is committing a crime?

No wonder we have a problem. Child sex traffickig is one of the most evil forms of modern slavery. It would be more accurate to call it “rape for profit.” The pimps are slave owners and the clients are pedophiles. And the brutalized, exploited CHILD VICTIM is committing a crime?

The scope and magnitude of human trafficking is growing to epidemic proportions. Efforts directed at public awareness campaigns and victim support are useful, but they don’t address the source of the problem: The Demand. – Global Centurion

This is the worst form of child slavery.Global Centurion is “dedicated to eliminating child sex slavery by focusing on investigation, arrest, prosecution, and conviction of the predators and perpetrators.” Please go visit their website to learn more about this non-profit organization.